EXC 2020 Temporal Communities

With ChatGPT and machine translation what they are today, the question of language learning is under fire. What young student will want to become a translator, or a specialist of a language that they can simply interpret and produce using free online resources? But immediate transparence and accessibility comes with a high price: the erasure of difference, and of all the tight spots, conflicts, agonisms and perplexities that come along with it.  

Experimental translation, as Robert-Foley describes in her monograph published this year, Experimental Translation: The Work of Translation in the Age of Algorithmic Production (Goldsmiths 2024) uses the space of language difference as a locus from which to create, but also to resist and interrogate machine translation and other AI language technologies. It is no surprise then that experimental translation turns to language learning (and language forgetting) as a source of inspiration, be it through the creative-critical processes of experimental translators themselves, or through the use of language learning texts as source material for translation experiments.  

Using an interactive creative-critical format which alternated between Robert-Foley talking and participants creating and interrupting, this keynote explored the importance of language learning for experimental translation as well as the importance of experimental translation for language learning, and thus made a case for the value of literature in all kinds of language learning and for language learning in the value of literature.